Next up is to fabricate the fan shroud for the main radiator. Back in post #154 I mocked up a fan shroud from styrofoam and cardboard I had laying around the house. The main reason was to see if I could move the radiator forward 1” and still have the shroud clear both the power brake master cylinder as well as the front clam.
Here is a video covering the fan shroud fabrication process for both the intercoolers and radiator....
The 11” Spal brushless fans are drop-in style which requires the shroud to be about 3” deep. This added to the challenge of packaging everything together....
The Wizard cooling kit comes with a .09” aluminum top shroud panel pre-cut for the drop in fans and 4 angles for the top and side panels....
I only wanted to have the sides welded so first step was to trim the sides of the shroud panel to fit. Since I don’t have a table saw, I used one of the angles as a guide and a Dremel Ultra Saw to help make the cut straight. It worked out to be a good approach....
Since the shroud will sit on the sides of the radiator and not the radiator core, the side angles needed to be trimmed .5”. Used the same approach and trimmed them up nice and straight...
First step at the fabricator was to bend the top and bottom of the shroud panel to match the mocked up version leaving the face panel taller than it needed to be. Now to trim up the top and bottom of the shroud to get the final fitment completed...
Turned out we needed to bend the top panel over a couple more degrees, cut the tops of the side angles to fit, and weld it up.
Before it went back to the welder, I had to come up with a way to attach the shroud to the radiator which required a bit of thought. The fan shroud will only have a .25” clearance to the power brake booster/master cylinder. Also, because the Spal fans are drop in style there is not enough clearance to remove the fans from the shroud without removing the shroud first.
So in order to remove the fan shroud once it is on the car, I wanted to design it in a way that it can be slid up and away from the radiator. Thus, the design incorporates brackets on the side and bottom of the shroud, but not on the top.
Here is a pic with the mounting tabs and side panels in place and ready to go back to the welder....
Making this was much more work than I originally anticipated. If this was simply a rectangular design it would have been much easier, but the shroud would have interfered with the front clam so it was necessary to angle the top.
Pic of the finished shroud face, you can see the tig welding down the side...
Here is a pic of the underside of the shroud, you can see the tig welding in four places to add strength...
Here is a pic of the finished shroud mounted on the radiator. You can see we welded on the in-board radiator side brackets documented in post #161 as well...
Finally, pic of the radiator and shroud placed in the front compartment....
Very happy with the end result. The shroud fits, should be efficient and high performing, and also serviceable.
Next up is mounting the condenser and fabricating the cooling tubes.